Sunday, May 11, 2008

Yes you read that right, from Phoenix. So it is 3:15pm Phoenix time and 12:15pm in Hawaii and we should be landing in about 2 hours. We took off from Phoenix on time, and about 15 minutes into our flight, the pilot noticed a problem.. one of the flaps was not fully retracted. After doing a safety check of the plane, they discovered that this was indeed a problem. At this point we were told we would have to turn around and go back to Phoenix but before doing so we would have to burn some fuel. As we had enough fuel for a six hour flight, we could not land with this much fuel/weight. So we circled the Phoenix area for at least THREE hours. The fuel burning process does not normally take this long but with the problem we had, we could not fly any higher or faster. In order to speed up the burning process, the pilot had lowered the landing gear, raised the spoilers, and extended the flaps (as much as possible) to increase drag. Now, for those of you that have flown before, you know how noisy it gets right before you land??? Imagine that for 3 hours!! Oh, and when we landed, we were escorted by the fire department (as a precautionary measure), said the pilot!

Here we are now back in good ol' Phoenix, just waiting for a new plane. They cannot fix this plane and this one is now going to the hanger. Our new plane is coming from Cancun, Mexico and should be arriving at 6:30pm. After those passengers de-plane we will be able to board at around 8:00pm. Which means after our six hour flight, we will be landing in Lihue, Hawaii around midnight. This will be 6:00am our time and Joe and I will have been traveling with little sleep for more than 24hours. We got up this a.m. at 2:45 to leave for Baltimore. All in all this has been a fun day. At least we're on vacation right? Oh well.. fun times are really ahead now if we could just get to our final destination.